Chapter 17
The canyon extended for several miles through the Faron woods and backed itself up almost to the region of the Kokiri forest known as the Lost Woods. It was one of the several areas of wilderness in Hyrule which had been designated by the government as not only protected, but forbidden to all but authorized personnel. The Sacred Grove was not named such without reason, and the gods guarded what belonged to them. The designation of "forbidden" was meant not so much for the protection of the area as it was for the poor fools who might attempt to enter and find themselves never coming out again.
The security fence which walled off the entry point into the ledges, bridges, and elevators of the canyon where the entry to the Grove was found didn't extend all the way around the canyon. It only went for about a kilometer or so across a break or depression in the natural canyon walls near the temple which had been hollowed out of an ancient great tree by a race of sentient monkeys, now long ago passed into the pages of Hyrule's long history. Extending the fence around the entire canyon was unnecessary for the R.H.M.G. because of the enchantments laid on it by the goddess of the forest. This proved to be a very good thing for the royal engineer corp. Because what made it unnecessary also made it impossible for the corp for all practical purposes, and at the counsel of the Sage of Forest any plans to build a defensive perimeter deep into the forest had been abandeoned. The other sides of the forest which surrounded the canyon and the Grove had been charted, but only at the risk of the cartographer's life and sanity and only with the blessing and protection of the Sage.
The maps which resulted were kept solely in the hands of the R.H.M.G. to be released by the orders of a commanding general or person of higher rank in the event they might be needed in a crisis. The two brothers decided that their mother's current situation constituted a crisis of necessary proportions and took the Sariaton barrack's copy of the map they needed as well as fresh horses and provisions without explaining themselves to the barracks' captain. That was one of the privileges of their high rank. They didn't need to explain themselves to virtually anyone except his majesty. And they had hoped to be well on their way before he became aware of their transgressions.
If they could have, they would have skirted around the entry ledge and canyon altogether and dropped into the Grove from the opposite side where it shouldn't have been nearly as steep, or as far to fall. But they both knew that was impossible. The cartographers that had gone looking for the backside of the Grove never returned from their mission, and no attempts to identify the features of the Grove from the air using gyrocopters ever bore fruit either. It was a part of the enchantments laid on the sacred space. There was only one entrance and exit from the Grove, and it happened to be carved into a steep canyon wall.
As they had passed through the forest, they had to tread carefully through the narrow strip marked by the abyss of the canyon on one side and the cool, green, mystery that was the Lost Woods on the other. They could hear the carnival like playing of Farore's ocarina drift through the trees for hours, beckoning them further in. Given their last interactions with either of their grandmothers, although both felt the light, joyful calling of the music, neither of them strayed from their course to follow it. If Farore was trying to distract them from their purpose, she was going to have to do better than that. They both had a pretty good, educated idea of what new playmates might await them just beyond the canyon's edge. As long as their horses remained within sight of the canyon, they would remain on track. If their grandmother wanted them to stop, she would have to stop them herself.
It was dark as Gaepora and Daphnes rappelled down the side of the canyon to the ledge which marked the entry way of the most forbidden area in all of the United Kingdom of Hyrule. The journey on horseback had taken them most of the day and part of the night to skirt the security fence altogether to come to the point where this descent could even be possible, if not probable. They counted themselves fortunate that their grandmother's lulling music was the only challenge they had to contend with, though it would have been easy enough for her to drop them and their horses off the side of the cliff they skirted. Apparently, she didn't want them stopped so badly she would kill them to do it. So they had that in their favor at least.
They would be facing their own men, they both knew. More to the point, they would be facing men they had both hand picked to guard the Grove. If not exactly friends, they were all trusted, loyal colleagues, ready to give their lives in the service of their kingdom, and to defend that kingdom from all enemies, foreign and domestic. With what the brothers were now doing, they both knew they would fall into the latter category as far as their men were concerned.
With that in mind, they carried standard issue enchanted swords and shields, but otherwise only non-lethal weapons usually used for policing and crowd control. In particular, electrically and magically based stun weapons which could stop a large man cold with no more permanent damage than a nasty headache. It was a much safer weapon to use against "friendlies" than the ancient ice magic based projectiles their father had used in many past lives.
They slipped silently down the sidewall of the canyon to the ledge, night vision glasses lighting their way. They both knew there should be at least two guards stationed on this side of the bridges. Two good men they were going to have to incapacitate quietly in order to move forward. Neither was looking forward to it.
"It's for mom." Daphnes had told Gaepora when he looked uneasy at the plan. "And for dad."
"Yeah, I know. It's for them." He agreed back in the barracks several miles distant.
They both pulled out their stun guns at the same time while clinging to the rope which was their lifeline against certain death in the abyss below and aimed it towards the ledge, studying the space intently, waiting for the guards to come into sight. It shouldn't be long, the ledge wasn't that wide. They waited.
But no guards came into sight for several minutes as they clung to the ropes and harnesses. Daphnes signaled Gaepora using battlefield hand signs, "Where are they? Do you see them?"
Gaepora gave the signs for "No. No one."
Daphnes holstered his stun gun and cautiously crept along the canyon face to the ledge. There was still no one there. He then jumped onto the ledge and got underneath the rock overhang quickly, being careful to remain out of sight of the spotters that he knew should have been watching the opening. He brought the stun gun out again quickly and was ready to use it. But there was no one to use it on. The checkpoint was deserted. Seeing that his brother met no resistance, Gaepora rapidly joined him, ducking under the overhang to be out of sight.
"Where is everyone?" Gaepora whispered to his brother. "There should be at least two here and two just inside the entrance."
"I don't know." Daphnes responded. "There should be men here even during a shift change, and that's not supposed to happen for several hours. Something's not right."
Gaepora nodded in agreement looking around him. "No bodies. No signs of a struggle. Barring magic use, it looks like they just up and left."
"They wouldn't do that. Not without orders." Daphnes said. "None of them." There was a certainty about the declaration that brooked no argument. And Gaepora wouldn't have given one anyway, except for the evidence, or lack thereof around them.
"So what do we do? Do we investigate their absence, or do we go forward?" Gaepora asked. It was a more than legitimate question. The Grove's security fell under their oversight.
"You mean 'what's more important, the Grove or mom and dad?'" Daphnes replied.
It didn't take long for Gaepora to respond. "Right. Let's get going. We'll write up their extended coffee breaks later."
The rest of the Grove's wooded passages and checkpoints were the same, empty, as they crept through it from cliff enclosed section to cliff enclosed section. It had once been guarded by a skull kid, one of the enigmatic magical peoples that made their home in the Lost Woods. But the original guardian had been brutally killed centuries before by an ancient enemy. The royal military had taken over guardianship not long after under the Hero's direction and had kept the best of its highly trained special missions guards to secure the Grove ever since because of the sensitive nature of the site. Neither Hyrule nor any realm connected to it could afford the temple which lie within to be compromised. They knew and understood this from far too many painful experiences.
The Temple of Time was built over a kind of nexus, a meeting point between belief and reality that occurred nowhere else as strongly as it did in Hyrule. It protected that nexus through several measures which were taken. The guards and the Grove were only one of them. The temple itself was another.
As Gaepora and Daphnes approached the site of the temple, they were reminded forcefully of the extra-dimensional nature of the place. The only site which greeted anyone fortunate enough to make it this far was ancient ruins. The roof and stone sidewalls of the temple had given way long, long before and the central hall of the temple had been exposed to the ravages of time, the elements, and the creep of the forest. The only thing which stood strangely untouched was a stone and metal frame which once housed ornate double wooden doors. Anyone who did not know or understand the nature of the protections laid on this place would believe it was just a ruined pile of stones and termite ridden wood and there was nothing further to be had. And for all intents and purposes, they would be right. That is all that would be available to those trespassers who came either ignorant or uninvited.
As the two Hylian men stood before the door frame, they began to wonder if they were the former as well as the latter in this case. Though having been thoroughly briefed in time past by the king himself about the temple, this was the first time they had actually been at the temple site.
"Are you kidding me?" Daphnes asked. "There's nothing here."
"Yeah, sure looks like it. But you remember what his majesty told us about it. The functional temple's not present within normal time. You've got to pass through the active door frame. It's the only way in or out for anyone, even the gods." Gaepora reminded his older brother. "But the first thing we want, we don't need to get in for just yet. It should be accessible regardless of whether we're within the temple's altered time field or not."
Gaepora pointed in the direction of north, just beyond where two massive bronze doors had been broken off of their hinges centuries ago and lay in ruins to the sides. There in the dark with the night vision glasses he could just make out a pedestal with steps that led up to it and a silvery object standing straight up from it.
"Right." Daphnes said. "We grab the Master Sword and then take it into the temple itself." He said as he stepped away from the door frame and went to the sides where a crumbling staircase offered a precarious way down into the ruined great hall. "From there we re-insert it into the pedestal of the 'internal' temple and that should give us access to the Sacred Realm and the Triforce. We wish for mom and dad to ascend, they do, and we go home to face the consequences. Sounds simple enough."
Gaepora shook his head, "I wish it was." He said as he joined him on the staircase, descending down to what was once a marble floor now caked with centuries of moss and dirt. The brown remains of tiny shoots of grass and wild flowers trying in futility to grow and spread among the cracks in the disintegrating stone floor lay scattered as winter tightened its grip. "There's still the matter of the Artificial Intelligence in the sword allowing us to take it from the pedestal. It has to recognize us from the DNA markers or the one who touches it is fried. The only people it was ever supposed to recognize is either mom or dad. There's no guarantee it will let us take it, much less let one of us go with both hands still attached." Gaepora remembered what Talon had told him concerning his own hubris in trying to claim the sword for himself, and the centuries he had lived without his left hand.
Daphnes had no answer for that just yet as he and his brother made their way across to the fallen bronze doors. The truth was it was a problem he'd been trying to figure out since they left the barracks in Sariaton, just like his brother he surmised. He still didn't have a good answer except to hope that his and his brother's combination of the Hero's and the Princess' DNA would be enough to convince the AI to not deprive one of them of his dominant hand. In short, he was hoping for some kind of miracle. In a struggle against gods, he figured a miracle was the only way they were going to win.
Looking up through the doorway with the night vision glasses, Daphnes could see the stairs which led up to the platform where the pedestal which held the sacred blade was kept. Except...
"Hey, Gaepora, I think my glasses are having issues. Can you zoom in on the pedestal up there and tell me what you see?" He asked his brother.
Gaepora put his right hand to the side of his glasses and began to adjust the zoom so as to see the pedestal at the top clearly.
"Do you see what I don't see?" Daphnes asked him.
"No. I mean yes. I mean, where did it go?" His brother responded. "The pedestal's empty."
"That's what my glasses were telling me too." Daphnes said, starting quickly upwards on the stone steps. Gaepora followed after him.
The pedestal was in fact empty as they reached the ruined chamber. They could both see the slot where the sword had rested clearly.
"Could you have made a mistake?" Daphnes asked his brother in frustration. "Is it possible that's not what you saw from the door frame?"
"Oh no, he saw the Master Sword, Daphnes." A familiar female voice answered his question from the shadows near the steps behind them. "I just got to it first."
Daphnes turned around so fast in surprise that he nearly did a pirouette. "Malona?!" He said in surprise, louder than he had intended to. "What? How? Why? What did you...?"
The woman in front of him with long dark blond hair tied back into a pony tail looked nearly identical to her mother who still lay in the hospital in Castleton, except of course she was over twenty years younger. She wore a heavier green and brown leather jacket over a green denim workshirt, and matching denim pants. On her feet were black tactical boots. In her left hand was the sapphire blue hilt and silvery blade which had been their objective.
"It's good to see you too big brother." Malona responded. "Fi and I came to a mutual understanding a few minutes ago." She said, nodding to the blade in her hand. "I'll fill you in on the details once we're inside the temple proper."
The inside of the temple felt... strange. That was the best way Malona could describe it. It felt almost disjointed or out of synch in some way as she and her brothers stepped through the portal into the "real" temple. His majesty had failed to warn her of that when he quickly briefed her on what he needed her to do.
"My dear sister," he had begun as he spoke to her outside of the hospital room, out of her mother's hearing. She had always liked his majesty, though it was strange to see him as a brother. He was more like a strange but favorite uncle that she rarely got to see growing up except on the television. "Malona, my dear, I must ask you to do something which could put your life at risk. But if you don't, your brothers may find their task much harder than it need be."
"Of... of course, your majesty." She had responded. What else does one say to the most powerful man in all of Hyrule? Never mind their strange fraternal connection.
"I have already placed the necessary calls to the command post in the Sacred Grove to rescind my previous orders and to issue new ones regarding your brothers," he told her, though she had no idea what those previous orders might have been, "who I believe are going to attempt to access the Sacred Realm in order to use the Triforce to help your mother."
Malona hadn't been able to respond to that with anything but silence. She knew her father's stories as well as anyone, perhaps better than her brothers. She knew all that this meant.
"In order to do that, they are going to need to pull the Master Sword from the pedestal outside of the inner temple and take the sword inside." He told her. "As the generals charged with the security of the Grove, they already know all this. What none of us knows is how Fi will respond. She was originally programmed to only accept the Hero's and the Princess' DNA signatures. Her programming has been altered over the centuries to accept other signatures which still carry the same markers, but that list is very narrow and specific and it has been a long time since anyone other than the Hero or the Princess has attempted it. As a matter of fact, I was the last person to try forty five years ago. Your brothers and you should meet Fi's criteria, but I am concerned that one of the goddesses might have reprogrammed her in the last forty five years to forbid your father or mother from taking any action that was prohibited them."
"So what do you want me to do?" She had asked him in confusion. "It sounds like I'll be taking my chances just as much as they will."
"More than your brothers, you resemble your mother the most. You are the spitting image of her when she was your age, and you always have been. When I noticed this many years ago, out of mere curiosity I quietly had a DNA test performed to compare yours and your mother's genetics. When the test came back, the lab asked if I had sent them two samples from the same person. Except for some very minor variances, they were nearly identical."
"How is that possible?" Malona had asked, stunned.
"I honestly don't know. There has always been a strong family resemblance among the female descendants of my Lady. I always believed that was because my Lady had always arranged it that way every time she reincarnated into this world. But the tests I had performed suggest there is more to it than that. As my Lady has been bound to mortal flesh since before you were born she could not have had anything to do with it herself. When I ran the same tests between your father and your brothers as a control they came back as one might expect, a father and two brothers. But where your genetics are concerned, my dear, you and your mother are identical twins."
"So you want me to attempt to draw the sword before my brothers get there?" She asked jumping ahead of him.
"Yes." He had said simply. "Assuming that Fi's programming hasn't been altered, you alone have the best chance of being recognized by her."
"And if it has?" She asked.
"That is why this is a terrible risk I am asking you to take." He had said.
It hadn't taken Malona long to decide. She loved her brothers. She loved her father and mother dearly. She didn't know why her dad hadn't immediately helped her mother, but her mom was right. The man she knew would have gone into the shadow and back for the woman lying in the hospital room. She knew that because he had proven that over and over again. If he hadn't yet helped her, it was because it was impossible for him to do so.
Once the three of them had stepped inside of the true Temple of Time, she had quickly brought her brothers up to speed on his majesty's machinations to get her to the sword, and get the guardsmen out of the way, before they arrived.
"Fi recognized me as mom at first," she explained, "just like Talon hoped she would. Then I had to explain who I really was and why I needed her help."
"And she agreed?" Daphnes asked. "Just like that?"
Suddenly the image of a surreal looking blue and silver young woman appeared before them in the hall near Malona. "Of course I agreed." She told them. "Master Link gave me specific instructions to allow any one of his two sons or one daughter access."
"He did?" Gaepora asked her in disbelief. "When did he do that?"
"According to my internal clock, approximately three hours and twenty seven minutes ago." Fi responded.
"Wait, dad was here? Three and a half hours ago?" Daphnes asked. "How is that possible?"
"You didn't tell them, Mistress Malona?" Fi asked innocently.
"Tell us what?" Gaepora demanded from his little sister.
"Dad ascended after eight o'clock this morning. Mom and I caught it on the surveillance cameras. One minute he was sitting in a chair, the next he was transformed into a glowing ball of light and then he was gone." She told her brothers, her eyes beginning to water a little at the memory. Fi quietly vanished and retreated back into the depths of the blade.
"Dad's gone?" Daphnes asked. "He's really gone?" He looked like a man who'd been struck in the stomach at the news.
"He's not gone." Malona corrected him strongly. "He ascended. He returned to the plane the gods dwell on, just like he told us when we were kids."
Tears came to Gaepora's eyes as the impact of the news settled on him. "Dad..." He whispered. "Wait, what about mom?" He asked.
"She's still in the hospital." Malona said. "Her condition hasn't changed."
"Well, couldn't dad help her?" Gaepora asked. "Couldn't he bring her with him?"
"Neither his majesty nor mom knows what happened, or why he hasn't done it yet." Malona told them both. "But this is the man who lived and died hundreds of times and fought the Demon King himself in order to protect her. Do you really believe that he wouldn't have if he could have?"
Gaepora shook his head. He knew how close his dad had always been to his mom.
"That's why his majesty wanted your plan to have the best chance to succeed." Malona told them both as she crossed the marble and gold floor of the temple's great hall, Master Sword in hand. "He's afraid something's not right with the three goddesses. Something's blinding them to mom's real disposition or something, and he didn't know what it was when he talked to me."
Across the hall were the steps they had just come down in the regular flow of time which ran outside of the temple. Malona strode towards them with a purpose and her brothers followed after her. "His majesty said all we needed to do was to insert the sword into the pedestal again and that would bring whoever was standing close by into the Sacred Realm." She said.
"As far as we know." Daphnes replied. "That's what he told us too. Beyond that it's anybody's guess."
She motioned for them to follow her up the steps right behind her. As they reached the top, they all stood around the pedestal. "Ready?" Malona asked her brothers.
"As we're going to be." Gaepora responded.
"Do it." Daphnes told his sister.
Malona took the sword in both hands and pointed the tip of the blade into the thin opening in the pedestal, and then shoved down hard, locking the Master Sword into the pedestal. Immediately a wave of blue energy swirled up and around the three siblings, and then they were gone.